WBW Writer's Blog Purpose
If you are like me, there is no shortage of ideas that occur to you about things that need to be written.
Why do Ron DeSantis and his friends
believe that young people can't handle the truth about our history? Why
does he believe they are a bunch of snowflakes? Someone should write
about that!
Why are so many adults afraid to challenge students with critical thinking skills? Do they really think students shouldn't be challenged? Thinking is like a muscle, it gets stronger the more resistance and challenge it encounters. Without that resistance, our thinking will atrophy. Someone should write about that!
How do we challenge the Just War mindset of mainstream Christianity in our country? Before the Iraq war, there were huge demonstrations throughout the country. But the churches were virtually silent. Anecdotal evidence is that fewer than 1% of churches preached or taught anything about the injustice of that war. And now, 20 years later, the silence is deafening. Someone should write about that!
So perhaps this blog can be a place where we can contribute more thoughts and ideas about our writing and how to, well, keep writing.
Let me know what you think.
Geoff
Rivera Sun just shared this on Twitter and I thought it was poignant and evocative. https://twitter.com/RiveraSunAuthor/status/1641139882876600323?s=20
ReplyDeleteCym, the writing and the music are beautiful. Losing species is connected to the climate crisis, which war and war preparations have had a large part in.
Delete“When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Have you ever heard this saying called “Maslow’s hammer”? It’s often quoted in peace activist circles, but as an issue of writing ethics, I’d like to take this opportunity to ask people to be careful about how you quote it in your nonfiction peace writing. Writers of academic and other nonfiction writing often feel a strong responsibility to footnote and cite their sources, and unfortunately this has led some people to cite Maslow as the earliest source they can find for this quote. And once such citations are published, they take on a life of their own on the Internet. But in fact it is folk wisdom that’s much older than the book where Maslow uses it. (In my family it dates back at least to my grandmother’s generation, and I heard it said long before Maslow published the book that I have seen cited as the “source.”) So if you must cite your source, please consider the possibility that it’s just folk wisdom, not attributable to any individual. And may we take this as a general lesson about attribution in our peace writing.
DeleteSorry, the above Anonymous comment is me, I wasn't signed in. I don't seem to be able to edit it to identify myself or delete it and repost, so I guess this is the best workaround. I'll be more careful from now on!
ReplyDeleteYour comment above would make a good posting on its own, especially if you add more detail or examples. Thanks for becoming a contributor.
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